Time’s list of world’s most influential people is depressing news for Latin America | Opinion

Many people in Latin America are celebrating that Time magazine’s list of the world’s 100 most influential people includes seven Latin Americans. But I find the list depressing: It perpetuates the view that the region can only produce good soccer players, artists and leftist leaders.

It’s sad, because there’s not one single Latin American technological innovator, business leader, scientist, physician or academic on the list. Like in the 1950’s, it looks like Time sees Latin America only as a breeding ground for artists and leftist revolutionaries.

The magazine’s list, released April 13, includes Brazilian President and former union leader Luis Inacio Lula da Silva, Colombia’s President and former leftist guerrilla Gustavo Petro, Mexican actress Salma Hayek, Chilean actor Pedro Pascal, U.S.-Dominican actress Zoe Saldaña, Argentina’s soccer champion Lionel Messi and Mexican activist María Herrera Magdaleno.

I have no problem with the magazine’s selection of Messi, who is much better known internationally than most other people on the list.

I just came back from a vacation in India and Bhutan, where I found Messi fans in the most remote corners of the Himalaya mountains.

Whenever I couldn’t strike up a conversation with people in the mountains, I said the magic words, “I was born in Argentina, the land of Messi!.” Immediately, everybody smiled and began to chant, “Messi!, Messi!” It turned out to be the most effective conversation opener.

But Time’s selection of most of its other Latin Americans on the list is questionable.

Is Brazil’s Lula really one of the world’s most influential people? Just in recent days, Lula asked that Ukraine accept Russia’s occupation of Crimea, and proposed that Brazil and China create a currency to replace the U.S. dollar. I don’t know many experts who take Lula’s proposals very seriously.

Is Colombia’s Petro really an influential figure in the world? I seriously doubt it. His campaign plan to halt Colombia’s new oil exploitation projects to help protect the environment brought him cheers from environmentalists, but his near unilateral cease-fire with Colombia’s ELN guerrillas is hardly winning him great respect in his own country. His approval rate in Colombia has dropped from 56% when he took office in mid-2022 to 40% today, according to an Invamer poll.

As for performers Hayek, Pascal and Saldaña, cheers for them. But the Time list should have included at least one Latin American technology or social innovator.

While Latin America’s share of technological innovations remains small, it was the fastest-growing region for venture capital funding of technology firms in 2021, according to the Crunchbase technology data website.

Time’s list of 100 most influential people should have included innovators such as Guatemala’s Luis Von Ahn. He is the founder of CAPTCHA, the little boxes with funny letters and numbers to prevent robots from getting into websites, and of Duolingo, probably the biggest language learning app in the world. Duolingo teaches more than 100 languages, and has more than 500 million users across the world.

The list could have also included Chilean Eduardo della Maggiora, whose Betterfly online platform rewards people for exercising and meditating. More than 3,000 companies in the United States and other countries pay Betterfly to help improve their employees’ health. It was valued at more than $1 billion last year.

Or it could have included Argentina’s Ady Beitler, whose Nilus food distribution company buys fruits and vegetables that farmers discard because it doesn’t meet supermarkets’ aesthetic standards, but is otherwise perfectly good to eat. Nilus then sells this food at cheaper than market prices in poor neighborhoods.

There are at least a dozen other social innovators in the region that could make Time’s list.

Sadly, Latin America has itself to blame, in part, for its stereotype as a region that is irrelevant in the global knowledge economy. The region generates only 1.6% of all international patents, down from 2.8% in 2010, according to the World Intellectual Property Organization.

The Time magazine list reflects both an old stereotype and a sad reality about Latin America. But instead of celebrating that they have seven celebrities from the region on the list, Latin Americans should see it as a cause of concern, and a motivation to improve their education, science and technology standards.

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